6 Ways to Use Quality Assurance

Providing quality customer service is essential to the success of any business. It’s a means of differentiating from the competition and building strong relationships with customers. Building service and security contractors have the added challenge of meeting diverse customer expectations, fulfilling contractual obligations and managing distributed workforces. That’s where a comprehensive, flexible Quality Assurance (QA) solution can help. QA tools that have features like mobile capabilities and integration with a customer and employee self-service solution make it much easier for you to listen to your clients and maintain high standards.

There are number of ways you can use QA in your business to help deliver the service your customers expect. Here’s a list of our top six:

1 | Building Inspections

This is one of the easiest and most common ways to use QA tools, particularly with mobile QA solutions. You and your customers can inspect job sites and evaluate the cleanliness. If someone did a fantastic job – great! – you have a record of that to share with customers. However, if an area doesn’t meet expectations, it’s easy to communicate that via QA. Simply mark the item as deficient and attach a photo of the issue, so an employee can take care of it. After the issue is resolved, you can provide proof that it was completed in a satisfactory manner.

2 | Task Checklists

Another effective way to use QA is to create task lists for employees. This provides clear expectations on the standard tasks that must be completed each time an employee visits a job site. They can quickly see what needs to be done and then mark each task as completed as they go along. Once an employee finishes the routine tasks, they can electronically sign the list to verify they have completed them. It’s a simple, yet effective way to ensure all components of a job are completed as expected and nothing gets overlooked.

3 | Training Employees

Having knowledgeable employees enables you to provide better service. Leveraging QA as a training tool can help you educate your employees and provide ongoing, specific feedback. For example, regional managers can go through buildings with their area managers using the QA tool and grade the various areas. They can leverage this as an opportunity to show the area managers what to look for and what the company expects. You can use this with other employees, as well, to help them understand expectations, how they’re working successfully and where they can find opportunities for improvement.

4 | Maintaining Compliance

In the Building Service and Security industries, it’s necessary to keep up with compliance requirements. Companies in these industries can leverage QA to track compliance-related items and keep their employees up to date. For example, you can use QA to quiz employees on company policies, or confirm that they’ve been through CPR training. If your QA tools are integrated with a compliance tracking solution, the process is even simpler: when an employee completes a compliance test or validation, the information is automatically updated in the compliance tracking tool.

5 | Safety Audits

Along with compliance, on-the-job safety is another key part of providing great service and protecting employees and customers. Building Service and Security Contractors can leverage QA to manage mandatory requirements, equipment and licensing. Supervisors can perform an audit on site to verify that safety and compliance requirements are being met. For example, they can check if a security officer is wearing the right badge and uniform or if a cleaner has proper equipment like gloves and a mask for a particular job. Supervisors can note any safety hazards or oversights as deficiencies to be corrected or improved going forward.

6 | Customer Evaluations

You’ve put in the effort to provide quality service. Now it’s time to gauge how your customers think you’re doing. It’s simple to use QA to survey your clients, but to do so effectively it’s necessary to ensure your QA tool has a customer self-service function. That way, you can give your customers convenient access to the evaluation, and gather feedback that will provide you with meaningful insight – and it’s all contained in the same system. This allows you to truly listen to your clients, close the loop on any improvements you should make and highlight your successes.

Using a QA solution takes the guesswork out of delivering quality service by helping you provide tangible results. The best Quality Assurance solutions are flexible, so there’s really no limit to what you can do. What are some ways creative ways your business can use Quality Assurance?